Snark, sarcasm ahead!
Over at the fundamentalist Christian Defending Contending blog, Mark Anthony Escalera had this to say: (link no longer active)
…After the flood, God created a rainbow to be His seal in the heavens. It was a declaration to show the mercy and longsuffering of God. The rainbow was His picture to a depraved world that while He would never again destroy the world with a flood, He would be coming again. The next time He comes, there will be no rainbows. There will only be fire and total destruction of ALL that stand opposed to Him.
The true rainbow is made up of 7 different primary colors of a spectrum. It is a beautiful reminder of the wonder that God long holds up His wrath and judgment against the wickedness of this world. Seven in the Bible indicates perfection and completion.
However, Satan perverted that sign and it is now used around the world as a symbol of “gay pride.” It has only 6 colors. Six in the Bible is the number of man. This “rainbow” is not a true rainbow, but is a symbol of perversion, debauchery, sodomy, lust, pedophilia, and bestiality – just to name a few. The one below is a perversion, and for the record, the White House KNEW what was coming and this was done deliberately. Read Psalm 2 for the conclusion….
According to the ignorant Escalera, a TRUE rainbow has SEVEN colors, seven being a number that many fundamentalists think signifies perfection and completion. The gay pride flag only has SIX colors, six being a number that many fundamentalists think is the number of man; you know like 666. In Escalera’s addled mind, the difference between seven and six colors is proof that the gay pride flag is a “symbol of perversion, debauchery, sodomy, lust, pedophilia, and bestiality – just to name a few. ” For a minute, when he started listing all the sins gays practice, I thought he was talking about Evangelical pastors. Just saying…
Evidently Escalera doesn’t have access to Wikipedia:
A spectrum obtained using a glass prism and a point source is a continuum of wavelengths without bands. The number of colours that the human eye is able to distinguish in a spectrum is in the order of 100. Accordingly, the Munsell colour system (a 20th-century system for numerically describing colours, based on equal steps for human visual perception) distinguishes 100 hues. The apparent discreteness of main colours is an artefact of human perception and the exact number of main colours is a somewhat arbitrary choice.
Newton, who admitted his eyes were not very critical in distinguishing colours,[8] originally (1672) divided the spectrum into five main colours: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Later he included orange and indigo, giving seven main colours by analogy to the number of notes in a musical scale. Newton chose to divide the visible spectrum into seven colours out of a belief derived from the beliefs of the ancient Greek sophists, who thought there was a connection between the colours, the musical notes, the known objects in the Solar System, and the days of the week.
According to Isaac Asimov, “It is customary to list indigo as a color lying between blue and violet, but it has never seemed to me that indigo is worth the dignity of being considered a separate color. To my eyes it seems merely deep blue.”
The colour pattern of a rainbow is different from a spectrum, and the colours are less saturated. There is spectral smearing in a rainbow owing to the fact that for any particular wavelength, there is a distribution of exit angles, rather than a single unvarying angle. In addition, a rainbow is a blurred version of the bow obtained from a point source, because the disk diameter of the sun (0.5°) cannot be neglected compared to the width of a rainbow (2°). The number of colour bands of a rainbow may therefore be different from the number of bands in a spectrum, especially if the droplets are particularly large or small. Therefore, the number of colours of a rainbow is variable. If, however, the word rainbow is used inaccurately to mean spectrum, it is the number of main colours in the spectrum.
The question of whether everyone sees seven colours in a rainbow is related to the idea of Linguistic relativity. Suggestions have been made that there is universality in the way that a rainbow is perceived. However, more recent research suggests that the number of distinct colours observed and what these are called depend on the language that one uses with people whose language has fewer colour words seeing fewer discrete colour bands.
And just like that, Escalera’s Bullingerian (see notes) numerical nonsense goes up in smoke.
Think this is Escalera’s worst with Dorothy over the rainbow moment? Oh no. Here’s how he ends his post:
…If you are reading this and think that this is the final conclusion of the LGBT community, then you have been duped. The LGBT community will NOT stop until the next step of Satan’s agenda has been accomplished and accepted. Polygamy will soon be accepted. The age of consent will be dropped just as is happening in other parts of the world. Adherents of LGBT, PFLAG, and NAMBLA cannot have their own children and will only grow as they prey on more and more young people trying to entice them to a life of lust-filled debauchery that will never offer anything but disease and heartache for it is not what God ordained.
Soon, this blog may be taken down because it will be considered hate speech. I know that day is coming. Many companies openly rejoice in the ruling by SCOTUS. One day soon, true believers will be given a choice to conform to the world’s standards or lose their jobs…
Someone unschooled in hyperbolic, delusional Evangelical rhetoric might conclude that Escalera is exaggerating (literary lying) to make a point. But, he’s not. He really believes that ONE DAY SOON, (as in ONE DAY SOON Jesus is coming back’?) his blog will be considered hate speech and taken down by the U.S. government. ONE DAY SOON, (as in ONE DAY SOON Evangelicals are going to start caring about the poor and disenfranchised’?) Christians such as he are going to lose their jobs over their homophobic, bigoted stand for Jesus.
Here’s the truth. Yes, Escalera’s post is offensive, ignorant, hateful, bigoted, and homophobic. But, all of these behaviors are completely legal. Escalera seems to forget he lives in the United States. Hate speech is protected speech, so Escalera is free to hate away. The same goes for losing his job. No employer is going to fire employees over what they believe as long as they don’t promote their beliefs while at work. In some instances, employers have a personal conduct code and this might result in someone being fired over hate speech, but most of the time employees, on their own time, are free to swill Schlitz, wave around an AK47, listen to Toby Keith, drape themselves in the confederate flag, and remind anyone who will listen that God hates fags!
Note
E.W. Bullinger was a nineteenth century Fundamentalist dispensationalist who believed the numbers in the Bible have spiritual meanings.(You can read Bullinger’s book, Number in Scripture: Its Supernatural Design and Spiritual Significance, here.
020916
He brings up the dreaded polygamy as a consequence I see…I am always puzzled when fundies yell about the slippery slope of gay rights leading to polygamy. Polygamy and owning sex slaves is condoned in the Old Testament – over and over again. I am not aware of any repudiation of it in the NT. My understanding is monogamy in our society is a heritage of European practices and Roman Imperial practices. So how to fundies explain away polygamy in the OT???
I’m puzzled about their beef with polygamy, too. You’d think, being the ‘small government’ proponents most of them are, they’d realize that some dude with 4 or 5 wives only has one ‘legal’ wife. The rest of them receive taxpayer funded benefits because they’re ‘single moms.’ Nope, you want to ‘marry’ multiple women and have a gaggle of kids, you can damn well legally marry every one of those women and pay the freight for all those kids all by your little lonesome. I’m astounded that I have to explain this on such a regular basis.
Of course, when you go spewing hate speech on your own time while identifying yourself by your job title, all bets are off about keeping your job — witness the recent case of a cop or firefighter (don’t remember which) who lost his job for a social media post of him posing in Confederate flag boxer shorts with a Confederate flag in the background, while identifying his job position. My initial reaction was that that seems like an infringement on free speech… but it’s also downright stupid, and maybe that should be fireable offence.
The bottom line of course is, if you have to be a dick, don’t do something that implies innocent bystanders are also dicks. But then, people who say things like “all my gay friends oppose the Supreme Court decision” have a hard time abiding by this rule.
My goodness what a loony. He’s so full of his own self importance what with thinking his blog will be taken down and the lose of his job. It sounds like he is a nasty little bigot like all the other nasty little bigots. Not someone important. And I don’t know what to think about the thing about the rainbow.
Hi Bruce,
The trouble with Escalera and his fellow Fundamentalists is that too many of them are so into a literal approach to the bible, yet do not seem to give any real indication that they know a variety of same-sex oriented persons. They would know that these people are NOT totally depraved as Paul indicates in Romans 1 and that Paul had very little idea what he was talking about.
As for same -sex marriage leading to polygamy, (others include bestiality, pedophilia), Sodom and Gomorrah, and the so-called the judgment of God, these Fundamentalist ideas are simply based on fear. I cannot see how same-sex marriage will affect my marriage to my wife. Society will be better for accepting same- sex marriage, not worse. It is likely to help create a greater climate of tolerance towards same-sex oriented persons over time.
As for the ‘rainbow’ nonsense that Escalera engages in, the sooner this nonsense of Escalera types is exposed, the better. Thanks for this post, Bruce.
Shalom,
John Arthur
Thank you, Bruce, for continuing to expose the loony tunes who wish to rile up the faithful. Hate is easier than love, and whipping up a crowd leads to hideous consequences.
Using the rainbow idea (6 rather than 7) to prove a point truly draws my ire. Why? Because those who are less educated swallow this crap because the man is clearly more knowledgable than they… so they believe. Escaper is keen to keep it this way, because then he has followers who defer their common sense to his “wisdom”.
These folks are the problem. They are THE problem. Yes, indeed. It is these hate-filled zealots who refuse to learn or love that are the bane of society.
Way to ruin the image of a beautiful rainbow, man! *In a hippy voice*